Learning to Drive

Wanting to learn how to drive? Our guide has all the answers.

Learning to drive is an amazing thing. It doesn’t only give you freedom, it opens so many doors for new opportunites in your life. Whether your motive is freedom, a job requirement or even your children. It’s one of the most important skills in modern day life. In this guide, we’re going to dicuss the whole process, and hopefully clear up any confusion you may have. Are you ready to start your new life as an independent adult? Yes? Lets go then!

What are the requirements to learn how to drive

You need to be seventeen years of age or older.

If you don’t have a provisional driving licence, you need to apply for one.

You must have good vision. If you don’t , you must have suitable glasses which will enable you to have a good sight.

The vehicle you’re learning to drive in must have MOT and Insurance. Whether it be with your driving instructors car, your parents or even your own.

You must be accompanied by a passenger who has an ADI licence (driving instructor), or someone over the age of 21. The adult must have at least three years of experience behind the wheel.

Learning the highway code

The theory test is very challenging. It doesn’t matter if you’re Einstein, if you don’t revise you simply won’t pass it. It isn’t a test of common sense nor intelligence, it’s a test of knowledge. There’s some extremely good materials and apps you could use to help you along the way to achieving good knowledge of the theory side of driving. There’s two parts of the theory exam, one being them multiple choice questions, and another being hazard perception. Without gaining your theory test certificate, you can’t book driving test exams.

Finding a good instructor

Finding a good instructor is important. Like anything we learn - whether it’s through our upbringing (parents), teachers – the mentor will always have a huge role to play in how you turn out in any skill you learn, especially learning to drive. The aim is, to be able to learn how to drive in a safe and patient environment – giving you all the tools to become the safest, most confident driver out there. The best places to look for driving instructors is probably social media. The good thing about social media is that you can see how other learners have reviewed the individual or school. This is open to the public and is an extremely good tactic to finding yourself a good instructor. Another way of finding an instructor could be through the DVSA directory of approved instructors. I also advise learning how to drive to give the teacher a trial. This way, if you don’t like them you can go elsewhere.

Getting confident behind the wheel

In the initial stages of learning how to drive, everything will feel ‘forced’. You will need to think about everything you do. This will soon change, for sure. Everything will become autopilot thankfully. There’s a variety of things you will need to learn – unfortunately, there’s too many skills to be able to list them all, but the two which stand out to me are manoeuvres and clutch control. Clutch control is a big challenge for any learner driver who’s trying to obtain a manual driving licence. And manoeuvres can be difficult, even to experienced drivers, fitting into small spaces isn’t an easy task. Reference points can greatly help whilst learning to drive and will help with this obsticle, though.

Taking your driving test

At this point, you should have learned everything there is to learn for your driving test. Anyone taking their test will be anxious – but this is a good thing. Channel the anxiety, turn it into a positive. The test will been for around 45 minutes. With these 45 minutes, you will be asked to do two manoeuvres, independent driving and show me, tell me questions. You should have learnt all of these skills before your test – if you haven’t, you aren’t ready yet.

Learning to drive isn’t cheap

It isn’t cheap to get onto the road. A recent study by the AA said that around half of their students pass within 30 lessons. Now, the average driving school probably charges around £23. Meaning, in lessons alone comes to £700-800. Then there’s the cost of the actual driving test, provisional driving licence, theory certificate. Futhermore, once you’ve passed it’s not unusual for learners to be paying £2,000 a year for car insurance. So ensuring you’re financially sound before taking the leap of faith is also essential.